


And Sullied A Dove

by bertie456 (bertee)



Series: Bones: You're Lovely to Me [22]
Category: Bones (TV)
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2008-09-01
Updated: 2008-09-01
Packaged: 2017-10-27 20:28:23
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,678
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/299736
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bertee/pseuds/bertie456





	And Sullied A Dove

_If I was a poker chip, where would I be?_

Ignoring the obvious answer of "in a casino", Booth emerged from Angela's office, trying to think where his stray chip might have migrated to, and trying not to think about the fact that he was looking for said chip at 11.30pm in a lab the size of Texas while wearing his pajamas.

It had all started earlier that day, when Angela had temporarily misplaced her drawing compass and so had asked to use the poker chip as a circular template. After pointing out that his son had done the exact same thing that weekend, Booth had relented and surrendered his chip. It was only when he'd got home, had a beer, watched a game, brushed, flossed and put on his pajamas that he'd realised he'd forgotten to reclaim it. And so, with the strange conviction that often accompanied deeds done in the middle of the night, he'd thrown on a sweater and driven all the way to the Jeffersonian to retrieve his lucky charm.

Yawning, he jogged up the stairs to the raised platform, wondering if the squints had a "Lost Property" box anywhere. Or, more precisely, an "Items Purloined From FBI Agents That Were Not Duly Returned" box. Unfortunately, the uber-organised squints had failed in this respect and he resorted to peering underneath pieces of machinery on the hunt for the poker chip, which his ever-imaginative son had named Chippy.

Searching contentedly in the rarely silent lab, Booth was taken by surprise when he noticed that the light was on in his partner's office. Fully aware that informing his partner that he was playing "Find Chippy" in her lab in his old, dark green sweatpants and mismatched red hoodie would buy him a one-way ticket to Crazyville, he debated whether to sneak out quietly in the hopes that she wouldn't see him.

However, when the partner in question walked across her office carrying a pink feather duster and wearing high heels and a cocktail dress, Booth's fears were allayed slightly. _Welcome to Crazyville. Population: Bones._

Reassured by the knowledge that if he was committed, she would be going straight into that padded cell with him, Booth walked over to her door, knocking once before poking his head inside with a friendly greeting, "Hey, Bones."

Unsurprisingly, Brennan was slightly startled by an strange, pajama-clad man leaping out at her from the shadows and whirled to face him with a yelp, brandishing the feather duster in one hand and a Bolivian fertility totem in the other as she asked, panicked, "Who's there?"

Partly amused, and partly apprehensive of being knocked out by a jumpy anthropologist holding what looked like a wooden carving of a squished Jelly Baby, Booth stepped fully into the light, raising his hands in surrender, "It's just me, Bones. You can put the weapons down now."

She dropped the fertility totem/Jelly Baby back on the shelf, but retained the feather duster, as she asked, breathing heavily, "What are you doing here, Booth?"

Not really wanted to share the story of Chippy and his Great Escape, Booth resorted to the childish comeback of "What are _you_ doing here?"

"I'm channeling," she replied matter-of-factly, waving her duster for effect.

Booth just raised his eyebrows as he said with an amused smile, "Channeling who? Martha Stewart?"

Brennan wrinkled her brow. "Is she dead?" Before Booth could ask how she even knew who Martha Stewart was, the anthropologist continued, "I'm not channeling in that sense anyway. When I get angry or upset, I channel my emotions into something productive."

"Like cleaning?" he asked, disbelief written across his face when she nodded.

"I've already cleaned my apartment and still feel tense so I decided to come here and use up my excess energy and frustration."

With a superhuman effort, Booth resisted any cracks about better ways to use up excess energy, instead using his stellar detective skills to ascertain, "So you clean when you're angry or upset, and you're cleaning now..."

"I don't want to talk about it, Booth," she interrupted firmly. "I want to clean."

As if to illustrate her point, she moved over to her shelves and began to carefully dust the tops of large tomes of various anthropological studies. Not convinced, Booth plopped down on her couch, putting his feet on her coffee table and suggesting, "Well, since you've cleaned your entire apartment and still don't feel better, how about trying something different?"

"I want to clean," she repeated firmly, not entirely unlike a pouting child.

"And I'm not stopping you," Booth pointed out quickly, wary of the fact that she was still clutching the duster, which she could easily shove in a very uncomfortable place if provoked "I'm just saying, maybe you could try talking while you're cleaning." She hesitated and he seized the opportunity. "You could start by telling me why you're wearing that dress."

Confused, Temperance looked down at herself, apparently realising for the first time that she was still wearing a halter-neck black cocktail dress and moderately-high black stilettos. Trying to cover her embarrassment at this oversight, she focused her attention on dusting her back issues of The Journal of Forensic Anthropology while explaining briefly, "I went out for dinner."

"On a date?" the agent asked before he could stop himself.

Keeping her back to him, Brennan replied, "No, it was just a dinner with a friend."

Once again employing his astounding powers of deduction, Booth figured that the reason she was either angry or upset - he'd yet to establish which - was most likely because of the dinner with a friend, and not because her very tight dress was currently giving him a wonderful view of her curves. "Friend, huh? Anyone I know?"

She gave no reply, and Booth sat up, intrigued. "So it was someone I know. Was it a he or a she?"

Smirking slightly at his ability to turn everything into some sort of game, she put him out of his misery, not in the mood to play. "It was Sully."

It was Booth's turn to fall silent, his heart sinking at the mention of Sully and his mind instantly leaping to the thing that he would currently be fiddling with in irritation had it not been misplaced. _Chippy goes missing for a few hours and Bones goes out on a date with Sully. I need to get me a better lucky charm._ Realising that his prolonged lack of response was becoming suspicious, he asked, with feigned casualness, "When did he get back into town?"

Now dusting the eye sockets of some skulls, Brennan answered, "He docked this afternoon. He's in DC for a few days to pick up some belongings he put into storage when he left, and so he invited me out for dinner to catch up."

The agent nodded. "How long's it been? A year now?"

"Ten months."

Swallowing hard, Booth gave light-hearted another shot. "So what's he been doing with himself? Fighting off pirates? Founding new colonies?"

He could practically hear his partner roll her eyes. "He's been sailing round the Caribbean for the last year or so; he said he went up to Newfoundland last summer but didn't like the climate. He's mostly been running charters for some of the hotels in the area."

"Sounds great-"

His platitude was cut off as Brennan continued, her voice quiet and almost wistful, "He's sailed all over the Caribbean - Antigua, Montserrat, Grenada - and his job doesn't control where he goes. He goes snorkeling, cave diving, paragliding on his own time without having to worry about murders and remains..." She seemed to pull herself together, concluding in a more familiar, clinical tone, "He's doing well."

Realisation had dawned on Booth as soon as she mentioned cave diving, and he said, more of a statement than a question, "You wish you'd gone with him."

Temperance nearly dropped the duster as she spun to face him, replying instinctively, "Of course I don't."

Getting to his feet, Booth walked over to her, his voice low and tempting as he said, "You sure about that? You said it yourself, Sully's doing well. His life isn't falling apart without having an office to work in, and more than that, he sounds like he's having a great time." He paused, seeing her eyes drop to the floor as she drew her lips into a tight line, still silently defiant.

Judging by her sudden need to clean, Booth decided that denial was doing more harm than good and pressed on, feeling slightly guilty for what he was about to do, "It's basically like one long vacation to him now. He's not working himself into the ground anymore, or spending all his time with murderers and their victims. And cave diving? That's got to be fun." She looked up, mouth still tight, but eyes now glinting slightly in the dim light of the office. Meeting her gaze, he finished softly, "You sure you don't wish you'd gone, Temperance?"

"No," she said firmly, but the cracking of her voice screamed the opposite answer. Her breathing seemed shaky as she rationalised desperately, "There's no use wondering 'What if?'. There are no alternate scenarios; time only moves in one direction so there's no way to change the past or regret decisions. It's not logical, it's-"

"Normal," Booth filled in, moving closer to her as she stood by her desk. "Everybody does it, Bones. Everybody wonders 'What if?' and we all regret decisions sometimes. The trick is to work out if the decisions are worth regretting."

Temperance looked up at him, the rare self-pity in her eyes now replaced with the fire of curiosity that he saw so often. "How? How am I supposed to work out if the decision is worth regretting? Is there a formula or some sort of test that I need to do?"

Smiling at her need to squint-ify everything emotional, Booth nodded, trying to adapt to her way of thinking. "Yep, there's a test. You need to think about the decision you wish you'd made and then compare it to the option that you did take. Weigh up what you could've got with what you have got." Seeing that the concept was still a little too abstract and metaphorical for her, Booth took it step by step, "Okay, so the decision that you regret is not sailing off into the sunset with Sully."

"Yes," she responded, somewhat reluctant to admit it.

Booth nodded encouragingly. "Good. We've already been through what you missed out on by staying here - cave diving, visiting exotic islands, not having to worry about a real job..."

He trailed off as a look of despondency came over his partner's face again and changed to a more positive topic, "Now, you just have to think about what you'd have missed out on if you went with Sully." Racking his brains, he reeled off the first few things that came to mind, "Spending time with your brother and your dad, getting that tape from your mom, being here when Zach got back from Iraq, going to Angela and Hodgins' wedding-that-wasn't, catching killers..."

He paused, watching her hopefully for some sign that she agreed she had made the right choice. He seemed to get his wish, as a small smile of satisfaction crossed her face at the memories. Buoyed by his success, he gave her a friendly nudge, saying with a smile, "See, what could you get with Sully that you couldn't get here?" His eyes traveled to her pale skin, and he amended, jokingly, "Besides possibly a tan."

Brennan's eyes suddenly filled with emotion again but before Booth could open his mouth to explain that he was kidding and wouldn't ever want her to get a tan, she answered his question simply and softly, "I could've had a relationship."

He fell silent and she elaborated, not meeting his gaze, "What I had with Sully was probably the most meaningful relationship I've ever had. If I'd have gone with him, I'd still have that. Instead, he's now dating a woman called Isabella who runs a hotel on one of the islands, and I'm alone again." She sighed, talking to herself more than to Booth, "I thought, when I decided to stay, that maybe..."

Her eyes lifted to meet his as she cut herself off, standing upright and picking up her feather-duster again. "It doesn't matter. I made my choice, and it's not rational to dwell on things that could never happen."

She moved to turn away and resume her cleaning, but Booth gripped the handle of the duster, holding it, and her, in place as he took a step closer, his voice quiet but intense, "When you decided to stay, you thought what?"

"Nothing," she answered, a little too quickly, and he just stared at her, waiting for the truth that they both knew but had never vocalised. Just as nature abhors a vacuum, Temperance couldn't help but fill the silence with reasoning, "What I thought at the time has no bearing on anything. It was nothing but idle predictions and speculation."

"You don't do speculation, Bones," he reminded her gently. "Whatever you thought, whatever you were hoping would happen if you stayed, there had to be some rationale behind it. You had to have some evidence that you thought it was possible or else you would've been on that boat with Sully in a heartbeat." He moved in closer, dipping his head to meet her gaze, and when he spoke, his voice was barely above a whisper, "Where's your evidence, Temperance?"

Not taking her eyes from his, her empty hand moved slowly across her desk, knowing the location of this particular piece of evidence like the back of her hand. Her fingers closed around it with a shaky grip and she brought it up for him to see, proof that, as ever, her reasoning was always backed up by something tangible.

Booth saw the apprehension in her face as she raised the object for his inspection and couldn't stop himself from raising his own hand to cup her cheek in a mirrored gesture of support and reassurance, already knowing what she held.

Their eyes stayed locked together, neither looking at where the other's hand had moved to, and then closed at the same time, the connection forged by their gaze transferring to their lips with an equally burning intensity.

Where their first kiss had been nervous and gentle, their second was confident and strong, tongues meeting almost as soon as their lips touched and arms pulling each other as close as the barrier of their clothes would allow. Booth's hand caressed the back of Brennan's neck, holding her to him, while his other roamed the tantalising curves accentuated by her form-fitting dress which she now seemed to wear only for him.

As her tongue plundered his mouth, savoring the flavor of his taste mingled perfectly with hers, Brennan's hand couldn't help but hold on to the evidence she had taken from her desk, as though clinging on to a lifeline while the rest of her surrendered willingly to the storm. Sensing this, Booth's hand traveled down to hers, squeezing it tenderly in affirmation that he was the only lifeline she would ever need.

Her grip relaxed under the warmth of his hand and her precious evidence dropped to the desk with a small thud, the noise lost amid the pounding of their hearts in the ears. Their arms came up to complete the embrace, all thoughts of Sully and his boat drowned out by the tempest of which they were now both a part, and all worries about what could have been washed away by the waves of the present.

Lost in each other, neither of them paid any further attention to the small toy pig lying on the desk, who had definitely played his part in the night's proceedings. They also didn't notice the small colored piece of plastic next to Jasper, which indicated that Booth's poker chip was pretty lucky after all.


End file.
